Far from Home:

Poems of faith, grief and gladness

 

Andrew Lansdown

 

Even Before Publishing -

an imprint of Wombat Books

(Capalaba, Qld), 2010

224 pages

ISBN: 978-1-921633-14-0

 

Back cover blurb

Little sisters pretending their father is a pelican; a man achieving “a gawky grace” while asleep in a public library; a woman stepping past a sprinkler in a confined space “like an Andalusian horse/ dancing”; a traveller weeping uncomforted in a café in Sydney; an aboriginal man playing a didgeridoo in prison; a son praying for his mother in her pain; a random spray from a damaged hose watering a wild daisy; a rainbow enfolding the fuselage of an aeroplane “like a promise”: these are a few of the many surprising, moving things depicted in this collection of poems by Andrew Lansdown.

Far from Home abounds with warmth, insight, quirkiness and compassion. The poems explore and express loss, grief, longing, regret, hope and happiness. They celebrate family, friendship, freedom and courage. They affirm the astonishing value of human life and are informed by an integrity that arises from the poet’s Christian faith. Readers, however, do not need to share his faith in order to appreciate his poems. These are poems of the human condition; and as such, they speak to every human heart.

 

“Lansdown has a very sincere and direct way of handling poems about his immediate family which subtly suggests great tenderness without becoming sentimental.”

            — Geoff Page, A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Australian Poetry

 

“James McAuley, the tough, anti-modernist Australian poet of last generation, was a super hymnodist. Probably the only greater Australian Christian poet is Andrew Lansdown …”

            — Les Murray, Image, Issue 64, Winter 2009-10

                                                                                    

 

 

Four Poems from Far from Home

 

 

He Knows a Place

 

He knows a place we cannot share,

a wholly black and boundless space,

and when he went he drew us there.

 

It is the rift left in a tear,

a bullet or a blade’s wet trace,

this place he knows we cannot share.

 

It is the darkness called despair

that none survive except by grace.

And when he went he drew us there.

 

Don’t go, beloved! Oh, beware!

Don’t turn your heart and set your face

upon that place we cannot share!

 

Sorrow and sickness were the fare

that gave him passage to that place.

And when he went he drew us there.

 

It barely counts how much we care.

This is the fact we must embrace:

he knows a place we cannot share,

and when he went he drew us there.

          © Andrew Lansdown

 

 

Hurt

 

A woman singing

Mississippi John Hurt blues …

She croons his ballad

about angels, death and dirt,

laying me away with hurt.

          © Andrew Lansdown

 

 

Sometimes in the Dark

 

There is, someone claims,

a pup in the prison.

And then a yap! confirms

it. Who now can work?

 

The women, the inmates,

are excited. The welfare

officer has passed the gates

with a pup at her heels!

 

It is trotting along

the verandah, towards

H Block—springy, strong

and defiantly doggy.

 

‘Oh!’ says one ‘girl’

who is serving time

for murder. Memories whirl.

‘Oh, I haven’t seen a dog

 

for nearly four years!’

The bars are no barrier

to the pup. It peers

through and the murderess

 

picks it up and hugs

it with a hard urgency.

It licks her face. No drugs

could put that distance

 

in her eyes. She thinks,

Four years and six to go.

She shakes her head, blinks

and says for consolation:

 

‘But sometimes in the dark,

far off, I hear them bark.’

          © Andrew Lansdown

 

 

Samurai

 

Like the samurai

I long not to shame myself

or my Lord in death.

Yet those ancient warriors

are beyond compare

in bare courage and resolve.

I fear I’ll never

match such mighty ones as them.

Yet my Lord avers:

Not your courage but my grace

will defend you from disgrace.

          © Andrew Lansdown